True Memorial
by glishara
Summary: After the events of book 6, the members of the Order of the Phoenix are fighting to carry on what seems a losing battle against the Death Eaters.  When Severus Snape is captured, it falls to Lupin to try and learn what he can from his former colleague.


"You cannot simply leave him here, Kingsley!"

The meeting had dissolved into chaos with the arrival of the tall Auror with his burden slung over his shoulders. Still unconscious, Severus Snape lay now puddled in a limp heap on the floor beside the table. Remus watched the motionless form, content to let others take the lead in the conversation while he processed the moment. His hand rested lightly on his wand.

"You would prefer that I handed him off to the Ministry, then, Minerva?" Kingsley's eyes were calm as he studied the de facto head of the Order of the Phoenix, unmoved by the tension in the room around him. "He was following Harry."

"Perhaps the Ministry would be a better place. They have the resources to hold him; they may have questions to ask him." McGonagall was arguing out of habit, Remus knew. Her eyes kept returning to the still figure on the floor.

It was Arthur who answered her. "They won't hold him," he said, his voice heavy. "With the war going badly, they will try him immediately for the -- for Dumbledore's murder. He'd be dead within a day, and no one would know any more than they do now."

"So what do you suggest we do, Arthur?" Molly had gone pale at the reference to Harry, knowing his danger extended to her son as well. "Torture him for the information we need?"

"Nobody is going to torture anyone," McGonagall said in her brisk voice.

"Of course we're not," Arthur said. "But we can talk to him. We may be able to learn something. We all knew him."

"We can't spare the resources," snapped McGonagall. "We're stretched too thinly as it is."

Snape's face was paler than usual, slashed by the black hair that fell across his cheek like the rake of claws. He looked deathly still. "I can watch him," Remus said quietly.

All of the eyes in the room turned to him. "Remus," Molly began uncertainly.

Remus smiled at her, though it was a rueful smile. "I am well enough recovered to handle guarding a single prisoner, I should hope," he said. "And I cannot leave Grimmauld Place myself until Greyback is captured or dead. Perhaps I can still be of some real use here."

"Don't be ridiculous," said McGonagall. "Of course you are of use! More use than wasting time on this...this..." She trailed off, staring down at Snape's unconscious form.

"For a few days, at least," Remus replied, keeping his tone light and reasonable. "It may be that he is inclined to gloat, and we can learn what we need quickly. Some of us, I think, need to have...some kind of answer from him, Minerva."

Her lips pressed together, thinning to invisibility. "Fine," she snapped at last, giving in somewhat ungraciously. "You can watch him. But if he tries to escape -- even once, Remus! -- you are to use any force necessary to stop him, and we will turn him immediately over to the Ministry."

Remus nodded, somber. "I understand," he said. He rose from his seat, finally pulling his wand free and pointing it at Snape. "Mobilicorpus."

As he left the room with Snape dancing before him like a broken marionette, he heard Molly ask, "You saw Harry, then, Kingsley? Was he all right? Did you see Ron?"

Remus closed the door behind him.

* * *

Severus woke with a headache and only a blurry memory of what had happened to give it to him. A figure looming suddenly out of the shadows, a blast of light, and then darkness. He was, upon reflection, faintly surprised to be waking up at all. Who would bother to attack him and then not kill him?

He cracked his eyes open and peered blearily around the room. Empty. He was lying on a mattress, but there was no bed frame beneath it. There was a single window and a single door, but otherwise, the only decorations on the walls were dark squares where pictures had hung long enough for the walls to fade. They were gone now.

He rolled off of the mattress and climbed to his feet, waiting a moment to regain his balance before striding purposefully to the window. The street outside was grey and still, thick with mist in the pre-dawn hours, but he clearly recognized the terraced houses of Grimmauld Place, and his lip curled.

He tried the window latch, out of idle curiousity, but his hand was repelled a few centimeters away. Nothing unexpected. His wand was gone, and there was nothing else to work with in the room, so he crossed back to the mattress and lowered himself to sit.

He did not know how long he sat, head aching dully, in the dim room. Eventually, heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway, and then the door opened. Severus did not know who he had been expecting to see, but he knew it was not Remus Lupin. He sat upright on the mattress, one hand closing on the edge.

The werewolf closed the door behind him, his motions slow and pained, his wand in his hand. The click was loud in the room. After a moment, Severus spoke. "You were supposed to be dead." He hadn't meant for his voice to sound accusing.

"Was I?" Lupin smiled briefly, the same mild smile he had always had, despite the twisting mass of scars that tore apart the right side of his face and disappeared beneath a plain eyepatch. "Greyback exaggerates."

"Not very much, it would seem."

"Perhaps not." Lupin paused for a long moment. "It was a bit of a shock to see you, as well. I don't know how I expected to see you next, but this was not it."

"It was not how I envisioned it, either."

"No, I would imagine not."

Too much hung in the silence for Severus to answer it: instead, he studied Lupin more seriously. The injury that had twisted his leg still pained him, it was clear. Lupin stood carefully, putting no weight on the damaged limb. He was off-balance, awkward. The hand that did not hold his wand rested lightly on his abdomen, just below the ribs, as if in protection. He looked old.

Lupin spoke first into the quiet, "What were you doing there, Severus?"

Severus's lips twisted into an automatic sneer. "Concerned for Potter, then? You are the ones who let him go haring off on this idiot quest in the first place."

"Yes," Lupin said simply. "I am concerned for him. Since Dumbledore's death, Harry has not been interested in listening much to any of us, however."

Severus felt the familiar tightness in his stomach at the mention of Dumbledore, and his jaw clenched against it. He did not answer for a moment, and Lupin continued into the quiet. "He, of all of us, trusted you, Severus."

"He was a fool."

Severus heard the grating harshness of his own voice, saw Lupin's face close in response. This time, it was his turn to break into the silence, "You all are fools."

Lupin paused for a long moment, then nodded once. "You doubtless need some real rest. I will be back before long."

The sound of the door closing behind him was loud in the room.

* * *

Remus descended first to the kitchen, dispatching Kreacher with a basin of washing water and a plate of food for Snape. The house-elf, called back to Number 12 Grimmauld Place with the closing of Hogwarts, was as surly as ever, but by Harry's orders was obedient to the instructions of those in the Order of the Phoenix: he moved off to obey.

Remus stayed in the kitchen, lowering himself to sit in a chair. He kneaded the muscles of his left leg absently, trying to massage away the dull ache that was a constant part of him now. The stiffness when he woke, the building pain through the afternoon as fatigue wore down his resistance - they were as regular as the fog that filled the streets of London now.

It was not really odd, how unchanged Snape had seemed. He never changed much, through any of it: the traitor in the first war was the same caustic presence he had always been through school, and Dumbledore's faith in him through the years had done nothing to open him up. Why should he now, after all had played out again, seem different?

He was older though, after only a few months. They all were, on both sides. The Dark Lord's power grew by the week, and with it everyone suffered, his followers as much as his enemies. The lines of that tension showed around Snape's eyes. There was, perhaps, something more as well. Remus had not missed the man's reaction to his mention of Dumbledore. Snape, for all his failings, was yet human, and Remus had to believe the struggle of morality played out still in him.

After a time, the silence of the kitchen began to chill him, and he rose to walk the halls of the old house. It was empty save for him, Kreacher, and Snape today: there was always more to be done, and the members of the Order ran themselves ragged trying to achieve everything. Remus, however, could not go out. Too vulnerable yet from his injuries, he was confined by Greyback's spat promise to finish their fight. Too vulnerable and too valuable, he sat inside and studied reports.

They were piled on his desk, and he dutifully gave them a few hours of attention, but as the sun rose near its zenith, he could not concentrate further. He returned to the small guest room he had hastily converted into prisoner quarters.

Snape was awake, and looked somewhat recovered from the stunning spell that had left him grey in the morning. He was standing by the window, looking out over the rolling fog. He turned only when Remus closed the door.

"I do wonder," he said, his eyes disdainful, "why you feel it necessary to linger here, in this house. Trying to recapture some part of your past, perhaps? Potter gone, Black gone, Pettigrew gone... only you remain. Is this where you choose to recapture their memories?"

It hurt, as it was meant to. Remus did not let himself react. "I honor James and Sirius by doing what I can for the cause in which they died. There can be no better memorial."

"A true memorial," Snape said caustically. "Black, too, sat here in the end, broken and useless. And Potter, locked up in his own sanctuary, able to do nothing for the cause but die for it."

"You and I both know they did far more than that, Severus." Sirius's spirit seemed to lurk in the room with Remus at moments like these, an accusing figure demanding some form of action. At the moment, it wanted him to hit Snape. Remus tamped down the impulse.

"Did they?" Snape asked, and his tone was milder now, the air of accusation gone from it. He stared at Remus, dark eyes lost to some inner calculation, the sneer gone for the moment from his lips. "You must wonder, sometimes. The Dark Lord is as strong as he ever was, and angrier. All of England is sliding to him, a day at a time. What did their fighting and their deaths gain them in the end? With Dumbledore gone, there is no one who can truly confront him."

"There is Harry."

Snape snorted and turned back to the window. It was true that Harry seemed a thin shield to hold up in these days, but Remus had seen Dumbledore in the months leading up to his death. Dumbledore had been intending something with Harry, and sacrificing his own strength and life for it. He held to Dumbledore's belief in the boy tightly.

For a long moment, Remus said nothing, waiting for Snape's commentary on Harry, but it did not come. Finally, he spoke again, "Kingsley told us that you were following Harry, near Godric's Hollow."

Snape looked over his shoulder at Remus again. It was impossible to read anything beyond the contempt that nearly always showed in his dark eyes. He said nothing.

Remus's leg ached. He was not certain how long he had been standing in the room, but it was too long. He summoned a chair.

Snape, who had flinched visibly when Remus raised his wand, looked deeply irritated with this. His hands fisted briefly, then relaxed, and his sneer deepened as Remus settled himself, keeping a ready hold on his wand. "_We_ do not torture our prisoners, Severus," Remus said quietly. "Or our allies."

Snape remained silent. Remus fought to maintain his own calm in the face of that silence. He needed a reaction, any reaction to work off of, but Snape - the practiced spy, always - would not give it to him. Finally, he said, "I do not think I will ever understand why, Severus. I can understand many things. Your initial decision to assist Lord Voldemort, the motivations of so many of the Death Eaters, even Peter's choice - I cannot imagine myself making the decisions you all made, but I can almost feel the shape of your motivations." Snape's face was stone. Remus went on.

"This betrayal, though, to go against Dumbledore and the faith he had in you... I do not believe that you were never our ally, Severus. But I cannot understand why you would abandon us again. With another man, I would call it fear. But you were never a coward, Severus."

Snape jerked as if he'd been hit with these last words, and his face went paler. Remus wished desperately that he knew what it _meant_. Snape had already turned back to the window and was staring out it, his back rigid. Remus stared at him for a long moment, uncertain of what to do or say next. Failing inspiration, he rose slowly to his feet.

"We are all merely human," he said, keeping his tone as light as he could manage. "I regret deeply that we did not make you feel more welcome, more at ease in our number. Some mistakes, however, we cannot erase. I only hope we may atone for them."

He paused, but Snape did not turn or reply. After a moment, Remus nodded, banished the chair, and walked from the room.

* * *

Severus stared down at the road beneath him, thick with the fog the Dementors had laid across all of England. Some part of him railed stupidly against the unfairness of the situation, that he, of all of them, should be stuck here with Lupin still playing the prefect at him. He would not give in to the whining self-pity. Since when, after all, had life ever chosen to be fair to him?

Lupin's words burned and stung in the silence of the room. He did not understand. Of course he did not understand. How could he? Severus wanted badly to break something, to smash glass against the wall of the small room, but there was nothing present but the mattress.

He remembered, now as every day, the look on Dumbledore's face before he died. The old man had never been proud in the sense most men were, but it had been unnerving and wrong, somehow, to see the naked pleading in his eyes at the end. Dumbledore was not a man made for pleading.

Severus could not recall now the place from which he had summoned up the hatred for his killing curse. There was a cold core there now, which stung when he tried to touch it. He wanted to remember. And Lupin did not understand.

He turned at last from the window and paced across the room. Four steps across, and then he whirled to step back. It was fundamentally ridiculous that Lupin, the werewolf, should have so little understanding of the darkness that could hang inside of a man, curled up in its own sheltering pit. He remembered Dumbledore's face, and Draco Malfoy's, nearly as pale as the headmaster's. The boy's wand had shaken, and Dumbledore had begged.

And now Dumbledore was dead, and Draco, too. And Severus was here, back in the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, such as it was these days.

He crossed at last back to the mattress and sat. He was tired.

* * *

McGonagall stopped by in the afternoon to check on Remus, who was still mulling over his last conversation with Severus. There was something in it, he was sure, that was waiting to be used, but he could not quite put his fingers on it. It was times like these that he missed Dumbledore most deeply; Dumbledore, he knew, would have made the connection, or offered some insight that would allow Remus to do so. Dumbledore was the man for this kind of work.

Remus was in the parlor when the door opened and McGonagall called out a greeting to the dark house. He had lit a fire against the fog-borne chill of impending evening, and glanced up from his contemplation of the fire at her voice. "In here."

She appeared in the doorway, a sober figure in her plain black robes. "Is he still upstairs?"

"Of course." Remus gestured to the chair opposite him in invitation. "I have spoken with him a few times today. I am not entirely sure how to reach him."

McGonagall sat on her chair primly, removing her hat. "I don't know that you can, Remus. He is not the man that any of us thought him. He may be beyond any of our abilities to touch him." Her lips thinned at the thought, and she glanced back at the door. "He isn't tiring you out, is he?"

"I'm doing fine," Remus assured her, not entirely truthfully. His smile seemed a reassurance to her, however, and she leaned back slightly in her seat.

"I don't mind telling you, Remus, I don't like the idea of letting him stay here, despite what I said yesterday. He is a danger to us, and we cannot know what he may do with what he learns here."

Remus remained silent for a long time, then asked, "Do you think there is a chance he knows what Harry is trying to do?"

McGonagall let out her breath in an exasperated sigh. "I don't know. I can't see how he could, but I don't like to underestimate You Know Who's information anymore, either."

"And you still have no idea?"

"No." She closed her hands on the brim of her hat. "It is something to do with Dumbledore's last trip out of the castle with him, I think, but he's not told us anything. I wonder, sometimes, how much Snape's betrayal added to that."

Remus grimaced. "It may have," he acknowledged. "But if there is a chance Snape knows, we must do what we can to try and learn it from him. The more that we know, the better chance that we can help Harry."

It rang a bit hollowly to his own ears, but McGonagall nodded. "I suppose that you're right, Remus. Do you think you can learn anything?"

"I will do everything that I can."

McGonagall grimaced. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Finally, she rose from her seat. "I only stopped by to see how you were holding up under the circumstances. If you need anything, do let me know."

"I will," Remus assured her. He did not stand. After another brief pause, McGonagall nodded and moved decisively out of the room. A minute later, he heard the front door click closed behind her.

It was several minutes before Remus could gather the energy to go find Kreacher about dinner, but the meal was ready before the sun had set. He took a bowl of stew with him up to Snape.

The small room was growing dim already, and Snape was lying on his back, hands folded on his chest as he stretched out on the mattress. Remus paused a moment, but Snape did not look at him, so he closed the door and said, "I brought you dinner." He stepped forward and placed the bowl on the floor between them, then retreated back to the door.

A long moment stretched before Snape rolled onto his side and reached a long arm to catch the bowl, dragging it across the floorboards to the bed. He studied the bowl in silence for a long moment, then said, "If you are going to kill me, if would be best to just do it now. It would certainly be safest for you."

"I'm not going to kill you."

Snape raised an eyebrow. "No?" he asked, his voice silky. "Then what precisely do you intend?"

It was an interesting question. Rather than answer, Remus summoned a chair again. What _did_ he intend? Their situation was, he had to grant, rather unstable at the moment. "I suppose we will need to turn you over to the Ministry eventually," he said finally.

"Ah," Snape said. "Then you will allow them to do the dirty deed for you. How very Gryffindor."

Remus couldn't deny the truth behind this statement, although it stung. "Our government is our government, for better or for worse. If I have guilt, it is for holding you here now."

Snape's lip curled at the word guilt, and he looked down at the stew bowl, stabbing a bit of potato with the spoon Remus had provided. He did not eat any of it. Remus watched him for a moment, then added, "I heard that the Malfoys were killed last month." Snape's eyes snapped up to him, sharply. "That must have been difficult for you," Remus continued steadily.  
"I know that you and Draco were close. It has been difficult for me to lose any of my students, and you were with him... much longer than I."

Snape's pale face grew sharper, and his dark eyes glittered with sudden anger at this. "Do not," he hissed, "speak of Draco Malfoy to me."

In spite of himself, Remus flinched back briefly at the intensity of Snape's tone. It was not entirely unexpected, but the raw fury that burned in his eyes was disconcerting; Remus tightened his grip on his wand, but did not rise from his chair. He schooled his voice to gentleness. "He was my student, too, Severus."

"Oh, was he?" Snape spat at him. "Curious - I never saw you trouble yourself with him overmuch. I never saw any of you spare much time or effort on him when it might have helped him. Now, of course, it is too late to actually _do_ anything, so now he is worth feeling sympathy for."

"Indeed," Remus replied, his temper flaring despite his best efforts. "Better by far that I should have coaxed him down the road that eventually led to his death. Do not pretend his death was our fault. Your master killed him, not us. He was not even a war casualty."

Snape's fingers flexed, and he held the spoon like he might a wand. Remus's heart was racing: _Dangerous_, he knew, _and potentially very stupid..._ Snape did not lunge at him, however. After a moment, voice rigid with tension, he spoke. "You know nothing about this, werewolf. I have sins on my soul, but my treatment of Draco Malfoy is not one of them."

"Is your treatment of Albus Dumbledore?"

Remus had not planned that acid query, but he could not quite stop it from slipping out. Snape went very still. The mask of his expression broke and the anger drained out: only a deep fatigue remained behind it. Several long seconds ticked by before he spoke again. "No," he said, and the word was harsh and bare.

Remus did not know how to answer that. He was in over his depth here. He needed Dumbledore. But he could not have him. "No?" he echoed.

"No," Snape repeated. "I think, though, that Albus Dumbledore may have a very great deal to answer for wherever he is today."

Lupin still didn't understand: it was clear from his face. Severus, abruptly, did not care any longer. He had played this game for too long. It was almost a relief, at last, to have it over with. "Don't tell me you did not know the kinds of games he played with all of us," he continued. "The great general, moving his pieces around, sacrificing them as needed. He would not be around for the final battle, of course."

Lupin's good eye grew hard. "And you, of course, had nothing to do with that."

Severus just shook his head. "Naive," he spat.

It was Lupin's turn to go very still, staring at him. Severus allowed himself a brief, dry smile. "Naive," he repeated, but softer this time.

Lupin leaned forward slightly, bracing his hands on his knees. "He knew." It wasn't a question, so Severus did not answer it. Lupin's face hardened. "He would have told us."

"Would he?" Severus asked. "Why? He didn't need you to know. He spent the year training Potter to take the fight when he was gone. Potter does not need you now, so Dumbledore did not need you. He spent his life and his energy on Potter, and now Potter is... doing nothing." Bitter, that pill. "Racing around chasing artifacts, as if one of them might have the power to save him where Dumbledore did not. And we have spent everything we had in a war that is already lost."

"And so you went to the winning side?" Lupin's scars were livid against his pale face.

"Don't be an idiot," Severus said, letting his scorn show through clearly in that moment. "I stayed for Draco, in the beginning. Now... Potter." He grimaced.

Lupin was studying him intently now. It reminded him unpleasantly of the way Dumbledore could study a person. Lupin's gaze did not have that faint edge of mirth, the way Dumbledore did, that twinkle in his eye that made a person feel he was being subtly mocked, but he had the same depth to his attention, as if seeing layers below what a normal person would.

Finally, he spoke, quietly. "It occurs to me," he said into the returned stillness of the room, "that you are probably of more use there than you are here." He turned his wand over in his hands, looking down at it.

Severus took a long minute to consider these words. "You _are_ a fool," he said at last, but there was no bite behind the words this time. "You will change your mind as simply as that, then? And you think the rest of the Order will just... blithely let me go?"

"No," Lupin answered quietly. "I think it would be entirely unfair of me to ask them to allow that. However... I would wager that if you moved quickly enough, you could wrestle my wand from me before I could get off a suitable jinx. He seemed perfectly calm as he lifted his gaze again to Severus.

"Why?" He was asking too much with that simple question, but he didn't know how to thin it all out.

Lupin smiled that same mild smile he had always had. "Dumbledore trusted you," he said quietly. "And if Dumbledore was wrong... then we have already lost. I choose to believe that we still have a chance." He paused for a moment. "What do you think Harry is really doing?"

Severus shook his head. "I don't know," he said.

There was a long moment of silence, and then Lupin tapped the door beside him with his wand. It swung open silently. Severus studied the one eye he could see for a long moment before he nodded. He had never been one for emotional displays: he would not know where to start with one today. Lupin didn't seem to expect one, at least. He simply returned the nod and waited as Snape strode into the hallway and down the stairs.

The little room was nearly dark now, with just the lamplight filtering in from the street. Remus sat for a long moment alone, listening to the footfalls, then the creak of the front door. It was silent again in the house, and Remus took a moment to absorb the stillness before pointing his wand at himself and speaking into the darkness. "Stupefy."

And then all went dark.


End file.
